Help me restore an oldie, but goodie

[roguewave]

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My neighbor gave me his old camera, a Canon Canonet QL17, G-III. Cool little Rangefinder. I need to replace the foam seals around the back door. Anyone have some suggestions. I've never used one of these & want to run a roll of TriX 400 through that 40mm 1.7 lens. Any tips would be much appreciated. Thanks, Ben

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[too old to care]

I remember those cameras. I have had the foam replaced on a couple of my TLRs (C330f's). You can buy the foam at most camera repair centers and do it yourself, I did one of my cameras, and on another camera I used felt instead of the foam, worked well.

 

However, the foam is often a part of the light seal. Only a test will tell. I removed the foam on an old TLR (C3) and never noticed any difference. On that camera to help keep out the dust I got a piece of foam from a typewriter repairman (remember those) and cut it to fit.

 

Good luck,

 

Wayne

[treeplanter]

There are several people who sell Canonet foam-seal kits on eBay. While I've never done the job myself, its supposed to be an easy job to replace the seals. You may want to post a note on RFF, many folks there have done this job.

 

Jim B.

[earleygallery]

Hi Ben, I replaced the seals on my R3 with a kit from eBay seller Interslice. It's a very easy job. Clean off any old gummy residue with lighter fluid on cotton buds, and the little wooden scraper which comes with the kits.

[ejd]

I bought a kit from Jon Goodman Favorite Classics / Jon Goodman's Seal Replacement Instructions using ebay ('Interslice' -- echoing James's post above). It has been excellent. He gives detailed instructions for many cameras. He sells kits for particular cameras but may also still sell a kit containing foam that you can then cut and use on many different cameras.

 

John